MANANGISM IN BORNEO. 89 
resorted to, among which propitiatory sacrifices and offerings 
predominate. 
The stock in trade of a Manang is a “lupong,” a medicine 
box, generally made of bark-skin, which is filled with “ obat,” 
medicinal charms, consisting of scraps of wood and bark, bits 
of curiously twisted roots, and odd knotty sticks, pebbles, 
fragments of quartz, and possibly a coloured glass marble, 
cum multis alits. These charms are either inherited, or 
revealed by the spirits in dreams as possessed of medicinal 
virtue. The coloured glass marble, where not previously 
known, is an “ obat’”’ of great power. On one occasion in my 
neighbourhood years ago, a travelling Manang belauded the 
efficacy of one of these toys of civilisation, saying, I think, 
that it was the ‘egg of a star,’ and that he had given the 
whitemen’s doctor two dollars forit. Among the audience 
was a Dyak to whose son I had given a similar marble, and 
he said: ‘‘may we see this great medicine ?”’ The Manang 
produced it. ‘‘ Oh,” said the other, “the Tuan Padri yonder 
has got plenty of these. He gave my boy one.” The Ma- 
nang speedily replaced the marble, and changed the con- 
versation to a more unsuspicious direction. If an unscrupu- 
lous trader were to take into the interior of Borneo a cargo 
of these marbles with holes bored through them to enable 
them to be worn round the neck, he would make enormous 
profits. One which | had given to a child was afterwards 
sold for a brass gong worth three dollars. 
Another and a principal “‘ obat”’ contained in the “ lupong”’ 
is “ Batu Ilau,” ‘“ Stone of Light,” a bit of quartz chrystal, by 
virtue of whose mysterious power the Manang is enabled to 
perceive the character of different diseases, and to see the 
soul, and catch it after it has wandered away from the body : 
for it is an article of Manang faith that in all sicknesses the 
soul leaves the body, and wanders about at greater or less dis- 
tance from its mortal tenement ; if it can be caught within a re- 
turnable point, and recovered before having proceeded too far 
on the journey to Hades, well and good; if not, the patient dies. 
The Manang never carries his own “lupong,”’ but the 
people who fetch him must carry it for him. He comes to the 
house in the evening; for he never performs in daylight 
